


Dance Hall Days

by piecesofalice



Category: Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Genre: Other, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-02
Updated: 2010-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-05 15:34:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piecesofalice/pseuds/piecesofalice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was dancing, around in a circle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dance Hall Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aj](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=aj).



\---

  
_Take your baby by the hair  
And pull her close and there there there  
Take your baby by the ears  
And play upon her darkest fears_   
"Dance Hall Days", Wang Chung

  
\---

  
_For A.j. on her birthday and everyday. ♥_

  
\---

She was dancing, around in a circle. The hazy lights licked at her outfit - a hundred bucks, thanks, Day-Glo gloves stolen from her sister - and she knew she was looking hot.

  
"Alex! Wooooo!" Cantina, her best friend, shoved a drink into her hand and tried to dance to the electronica beats while taking a sip from her own. It wasn't working, and the fruity liquid spilt onto her pink pumps, leaving soft, dark patches on the sparkly leg-warmers covered in ducks she'd insisted on pulling over the top.

  
"Shit. Hold this." Pitching the drink into Alex's other hand, she stumbled off the dance floor towards, Alex could only assume, the bathroom. For a moment, she stared after her friend, then the drinks, then down towards her micro-mini that was now itchingly riding up thanks to her electric blue suspenders. That horrible feeling of "any minute now, everyone's gonna see my white cotton underpants" outweighed the one screaming "you're underage! In a bar! With two drinks!" because really, which was more important on her birthday?

  
Exactly.

  
Her skirt had almost reached critical mass, and she tried to stop it by standing very, very still. The static from her dancing tights, however, was having the time of its life, sending the pink mini up towards her ears and herself towards embarrassment. _In t-minus five, four, three, two..._

  
"I'm blocking you from view. Give me one of the cups, and we'll move, together, towards the bar. Okay?"

  
The obviously masculine voice came from behind her, from a mouth that was a good foot above her, even in heels. Alex felt the cup taken from her left hand, and another - large, warm, like the wide elastic belt she'd eyed off at Bloomingdale's - wrapped almost full around her waist and lead her softly, but firmly to the dark-end of the bar.

  
Normally, she'd had bucked from this sort of arrogant behaviour from some loser-faced Joe out for a one-nighter, quicker than you could say "Wang Chung". But different situations called for different reactions, and with her brain firmly in avoiding-crisis-mode, she let herself look relaxed and in control by slightly grooving to the fantastic Duran Duran track that had now come over the speakers.

  
It was difficult, but she was slightly tipsy and the stranger's hand didn't feel creepy, just kind of nice. Great. A serial killer's wet dream, she was.

  
"Okay, we're out of view." He pulled the other cup out of her hand, and, without looking at her rescuer, Alex pulled her skirt down as far as it could go and thanked her blessings that her eighteenth birthday would not be remembered for having her ass hang out in the hottest New York nightclub (that she and Cantina could get into, anyway). She turned to grab her cup from her rescuer, and took a scull before she took him in.

  
"Watch it," he smirked, amused. A military man. It was all over him, from the stripped down, on-leave uniform, to the short back and sides haircut. He stood out like a sore thumb in the glowing thump-thump-thump of the room, while still looking entirely in charge and in control.

  
He was hot, too; tall, strapping, with a wonky smile and brown eyes. A gentleman. A bit older than her. Kind of looked tired. She tried to look coy and salacious.

  
"I can handle my liquor," she purred, and he pulled the cup out of her hand suddenly.

  
"You're, what, seventeen?"

  
"Eighteen, mister," she arched up, crossing her eyebrows in a frown almost down to her fluro eyeshadow. She poked him in the chest. "It's my birthday, so you oughta be nice."

  
Alex knew she sounded like a half-assed Lolita. How did Madonna do it, seriously? Military Man just smirked his crooked smile again, and put his hand out.

  
"Birthday girl, nice. I'm Bobby."

  
"Alexandra," she muttered, as much as you can mutter in a club, because it made her sound more sophisticated, and because she suddenly wanted to feel older than "Alex" - who had posters of Rob Lowe on her notebooks and a diary hidden under her flowery pink duvet. Act like a sex kitten, get it on, bang a gong. She took a breath. "Wanna get out of here, then? Go to Aj's for a coffee?"

  
That wonky smile again, like he knew exactly what was going on in her brain. "Your friend might want to spend your birthday with you." He pointed behind her, and Cantina was struggling over towards them, her fingers fixing her legwarmers while still trying to walk.

  
"She can come too..."

  
Alex trailed off, because like a puff from the smoke machine, he was gone. Cantina reached her, and handed her a round plastic earring.

  
"Shit, I'm falling apart, for serious. Who the hell was that?"

  
"No-one. Let's go home," she said suddenly, and dragged her friend protesting towards the door.

  
\---

  
Later, after she'd dropped Cantina at her parents's place, and after some inebriated "happy birthday"s and drunken ramblings about ducks on the front steps, she instructed the cab driver to take her home. The city spun past the windows, a mixture of heartbreaking damage and neon, and she suddenly felt how much her life was going to change now she was eighteen. Graduating from high school, moving into college, marriage, kids...it's what was expected of her tomorrow, next week, month, year.

  
They stopped at a traffic light, and Aj's Cafe was visable through her left-hand window.

  
She didn't want tonight to end if tomorrow brought everything scary and inevitable. "Here," she said, thrusting a twenty at the driver, scrambling out of the car in her stilletos and stumbling towards the cafe. It was small, a haunt for the coolest kids who weren't yet in college but wished they were sophisticated enough to be. Poetry readings and live bands punctuated the nights, bad coffee and so-so apple pie nursing in the patron's laps as they tried so hard to take in a watered down version of the culture they expected to revel in when they finally hit NYU.

  
He was there, like she kind of knew he would be, and she slid into the seat in front of him.

  
"This pie is crap."

  
"I know."

  
She watched him eat it for a while, like a man who'd not had a scrap for weeks. Self-conciously, she tugged on her skirt that was hidden under her big, bushy faux-fur coat, and wondered if he ate like he lived.

  
"Do you want a coffee? Some pie? Birthday pie!" He waved to the waitress, who scurried over and dumped an ancient cup of steaming black coffee in front of her. "And birthday pie!"

  
The waitress stared at him. "Which is..."

  
"Pie. With a candle in it." She just stared, before walking away, muttering _"whatever_" under her breath. He smiled, then turned back to Alex, who was now dumping several tonnes of sugar into the cup.

  
"Want some coffee with your sugar?"

  
"Why am I here?"

  
Frowning, he took a sip, and pretended to contemplate. "That's a very existentialist question for a birthday."

  
Without meaning to, Alex opened her mouth and drowned this perfect stranger with every particle of teenage angst she'd been harbouring for the past week. About her family, the career that was lapping at her heels, the police force, college; all the stupid things that meant nothing to her parents, or Cantina, or her diary but suddenly felt like they could mean everything to this buttoned-up smirking dude who probably chopped up girls on their birthdays and left them under floor boards for men her father worked for to discover.

  
She wanted to ask him, "why do I feel like I know you already?" but it was a stupid question and one that only lead her to more. So she continued on with her tirade, tugging at the cross around her neck and the buttons on her coat while he just watched, nodded and seemed to hear and understand every word she said.

  
Almost panting when she finished, the waitress cleared her throat and put a small piece of pie in front of her, the wonky candle glowing and wavering in the breeze from the constantly opening door, but not going out.

  
"Make a wish," this strange, unusual man named Bobby said, watching her watch the candle with that odd, wonderful, un-understandable smile on his face.

  
It was like everything and nothing, so she made the most bizarre of wishes and blew the candle out to his laughter and applause.

  
"Let's dance," he said, holding his hand out, and she took it because it seemed perfect to dance with an unknown soldier on your eighteenth birthday, who you'd never see again.

  
So New York. So now.

  
She held him, and he held her back, and even when they parted later that night, she knew she'd kinda-not really be the same again.

  
\---

  
Almost fifteen years later, she stopped in her tracks when she was introduced to her new partner.

  
Wider, tired-er; but still, he had that wonky smile that had carried her through the academy, vice, a marriage and a death.

  
Her bizarre wish, to see him again when she could understand their connection, rang in her ears as she reached out to touch his hand in greeting.

  
And she felt eighteen once again.

  
\---

_Fin._

\---


End file.
